


The Dangers of Sarcasm

by make_your_own_world



Series: Sam Winchester x Reader Short Stories/Oneshots [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Female Reader, Reader is Bobby Singer's daughter, Wishing Well, Y/n Singer - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-27 03:09:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17758637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/make_your_own_world/pseuds/make_your_own_world
Summary: Sam goes to bed in the Impala, happy to hunt with you and Dean, and wakes up in a strange house with no idea of how or why he got there.***PARTIALLY INSPIRED BY SUPERNATURAL'S 300TH EP BUT YOU DON'T NEED TO HAVE SEEN IT YET AND THERE ARE NO SPOILERS***





	1. Chapter 1

The restaurant you’re eating at with the Winchesters is authentic Chinese, or at least it looks that way. It’s family-run and the decorations hanging around certainly look Chinese. There’s even a wishing fountain in the center of the restaurant. It’s not the classiest joint ever, but life as a hunter is hardly glamorous, so you’ll take what you can get.

You and Dean are scarfing down your food as fast as you can while Sam picks at his plate. He’d been knocked out for most of the hunt you’d just finished with them and left you and Dean to do most of the work. Under the table, the two of you are holding hands. If they were on top of the table, Dean would probably groan and make a big production about wanting to keep his eyes safe from your PDA.

To be fair, you and Sam  _ do _ make Dean deal with a fair amount of PDA. The two of you both know how short a hunter’s life is, so you take the small bit of happiness you’re granted whenever you can.

“Come on, Sam, eat up,” Dean finally says once he’s noticed his little brother’s not eating.

Sam’s mouth quirks up. “Wanna take a breath there, Dean?”

“This is loads better than most of the food we get,” you chime in, nudging Sam with your elbow. “Do you want it to go, at least?”

“Yeah, and where are we gonna heat it up after it’s gone cold?” Sam asks. “Motel microwaves are notorious for being terrible at doing their job.”

You shrug. “Cold Chinese isn’t terrible.”

“That’s because you’ll eat anything,” Sam points out. You just grin at him and take another bite of food.

“So you’re just gonna waste it?” Dean asks, eyeing the food. His plate isn’t even halfway done, but he knows what to with food: eat it. Eat it all. You never know if you’re ever going to have another meal.

Sam shrugs. “You guys can share it.”

“I’m good,” you declare and wipe your mouth off with your sleeve. Hey, hunters aren’t known for having the best hygiene. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom for a sec.” You peck Sam’s cheek before scooting out of the booth, hands lingering together until you really have to let go.

“You two are gonna give me a headache at some point,” Dean says halfheartedly, grabbing his brother’s plate and tipping the uneaten food onto his. A few spare grains of rice and a noodle fall onto the table and Sam winces, thinking about the poor waiters that are going to have to clean up his brother’s mess. Dean’s already knocked a glass of water off the table, breaking the glass and creating a spill that stopped a group of people from getting to their table. Sam can predict at least one more spill before they leave or the restaurant kicks them out.

“At least we’re better than the girls you bring home,” he eventually replies.

Dean grins at him. “At least I don’t wake up with them looking at me all doe-eyed.” He adopts a high-pitched, breathy voice that’s obviously meant to mock you. “Oh, Sam, hold my hand all the time. Sam, it’s cuddle time! Sam, we’re playing FBI and I’m standing so close to you that the  _ suspects _ suspect something!”

“You’re just jealous,” Sam teases, throwing your napkin at his brother when a forkful of food barely misses his brother’s mouth. “Jeez, Dean. You act like you’ve never handled utensils before.”

“I’m just hungry because I had to do all the work,” Dean replies. “Man, what I wouldn’t do for a nap right now. Aren’t you tired? Oh,  _ wait _ —”

Sam blushes and kicks him under the table.

“Oh, we’re playing footsie now?” Dean asks, the shit-eating grin on his face so big he could fit his whole fist in it. “Sam, so naughty!”

“You certainly don’t act tired,” Sam mutters. It’s to his great relief that you slide back into the booth then, stopping Dean and Sam from getting into a full-fledged kicking war under the table that would  _ definitely _ get the three of you kicked out.

“Yeah, how much sugar did you eat after the hunt, Dean?” you ask and shake your head.

“Yeah, what an irresponsible decision it was to give Dean candy,” Sam says, raising his eyebrows at you knowingly. You smile angelically.

“Hey, Y/N’s my dealer!” Dean exclaims. “It’s ‘cause of her that I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel and crash into a building or drive off a cliff because I feel asleep at the wheel because I was just so tired and my brother wouldn’t drive because he wanted to grope his girlfriend in the backseat!”

Sam blushes and you kick Dean under the table.

Dean hisses. “Jesus, Y/N.” He clutches the spot where you’d kicked him. “Sam, you need to control your girlfriend.”

“If you think I can do that, then you obviously haven’t met Y/N,” Sam says, amused at his brother’s pain, and you grin a grin at Sam that promises fun later. For now, you just link hands with him and and set them on the table to annoy Dean.

“Is everything all right?” their waitress says, her smile entirely forced as she looks at Dean shoveling food into his face like a conveyor belt. That’s obviously her way to say that she wants the three of you out.

“Yeah,” you smile at her. “Can we get a box to go?”

“Certainly!” the girl smiles a real smile and scurries away, obviously wanting to get Dean out of her hair as soon as possible.

“Whose turn is it to pay?” you ask, bringing up the question-that-should-not-be-asked.

Sam and Dean both blurt out, “Not it!” and narrow their eyes at each other.

You sigh a long-suffering sigh. “You guys both realize that the credit cards aren’t hooked up to your accounts, right? Because you don’t  _ have _ accounts? And it’s just a scam?” You lowered your voice for the last question and look around, as if that was the only part that sounded questionable.

“It’s not that,” Dean explains, not breaking eye contact with Sam as he brings another forkful of food up to his mouth and misses—again. “Only the loser has to pay, and I’m not a loser.”

“Dean, I  _ always _ win,” Sam replies, exasperated as he shares a look with you. Dean always picks rock. At first Sam had thought he was just trying to make Sam complacent and then attack his paper with a scissors, but for years Dean has picked rock, and, no insult to his brother intended, Sam doesn’t think Dean has enough patience to carry out a scheme for that long.

“Not this time,” Dean vows.

Sam rolls his eyes and puts out his hands.

As usual, Dean picks rock and Sam picks paper.

“Son of a bitch,” Dean mutters, digging down into his pockets for his credit card. When the waitress returns, he doesn’t even bother to look at the receipt before sending her off with it. It’s not his money; it’s not his problem. He starts to shovel the leftover food into the box, alternating scoops between going to the box and his mouth.

“You’re disgusting,” Sam eventually says, his lip curling. How his brother isn’t the size of a truck, Sam doesn’t know.

“You love me,” Dean says with a full mouth, spewing rice across the table.

“Jesus,” you sigh, putting your head in your hands. Sam’s impressed you lasted that long; normally you’re overwhelmed with how outlandish his brother is by the first fifteen minutes. At this point Sam’s pretty sure Dean’s doing it just to see a little more hope drain from your eyes each time he talks and flood flies into your glass of water, making it undrinkable.

The waitress returns and hands Dean the credit card, forcing a smile at him as the elder Winchester tries to look her up and down with a bulging mouth, and you have to haul Dean up. “You’re terrible, you know?”

“Nah, I’m great,” he says easily. The water fountain catches his eye. “Do you wanna make a wish, Sammy?” Dean asks, tossing his brother a coin and sneakily stepping in front of the ‘NO THROWING COINS’ sign. Sam snatches it out of the air, rolling his eyes at his brother’s nickname for him.

“You want it?” he offers it to you and you shake your head.

“I don’t have anything to wish for,” you say, taking his hand again, and Dean fake-gags.

“Yeah, me neither,” Sam replies.

“You know, a year ago, you would have wished to get out of the life,” Dean cuts in.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Sure, I wish to have never gotten back in the life even when you came to pick me up from college,” he says sarcastically and tosses the coin into the water. It hits the surface with a plop and slowly sinks to the bottom of the pool. He shakes his head at Dean and then kisses you. You smile against his lips.

“Now make a real wish.”

“Fine.” Sam closes his eyes. “I wish—”

“Shh!” you shove him. “You can’t say it or it won’t come true!”

_ I wish Dean doesn’t make a fool of himself for the rest of the day, _ Sam thinks. When he opens his eyes, Dean immediately asks, “What did you wish for?”

“He can’t say or it won’t come true!” you say loudly, frowning at Dean.

Dean shrugs and turns away, crashing into their waitress who was carrying finished dishes and glasses. They all hit the ground and shatter.

“Well, it didn’t come true,” Sam shrugs, grabbing your hand and pulling you away as the waitress finally loses her patience and starts to yell at Dean in Chinese, which makes the owner of the store come out and yell at  _ her _ . “Everyone knows wishing wells are hoaxes, though.”

“How’d you know it didn’t come true?”

“I wished for Dean to not make a fool of himself for the rest of the day,” Sam replies. He looks at his brother, covered in the leftovers of other people and with a water splash on his shirt. “Obviously that didn’t come true.”

“Well, it might have worked if you had wished for something possible,” you joke. “Dean, come on.”

Dean just hands the still angry waitress a paper bill and hightails it out of the restaurant, saying, “I bet they put up our photos and say we’re not allowed back.”

“They’ll put up  _ your _ photo for sure,” Sam says. “Y/N and I, on the other hand, were perfect.”

“Minus her less than stellar manners,” Dean says and yelps when you smack the back of his head.

“Shut up,” you reply. He does.

“Ah, a girl after my own heart,” Sam jokes, leaning against the car and smiling at you. “She can make my brother shut up.”

“Watch out, Sam,” Dean threatens, unlocking the Impala. “I’m gonna seduce Y/N one day and we’re gonna run off and leave you at some sleazy motel.”

“Is that so?” you ask, playing along. “Where will we go? What will we do?”

“Well, for one, we’ll sleep in.” Dean shakes his head at his brother and gets into the driver’s seat. “Getting up early is unhealthy. Also, we’ll eat good food instead of salad. And we’ll go to lots of resorts and lounge around all day instead of  _ exercising. _ ”

“Mmm, sounds like heaven,” you joke. Sam pretends to be hurt.

“You’d leave me, Y/N?”

“Have you  _ seen _ Dean?” you ask. “If only he wasn’t a ‘love ’em and leave ’em’ type.”

“I knew you were just settling for Sam!” Dean crows.

“Where are we going?” Sam asks as his brother pulls out of the parking lot.

“West, for now,” Dean replies. “We’ll find a case on the way. We always do.”

* * *

 

“Sam!” Dean yells over the general noise of the bar. “Come on, dude! Let’s play!” He can see his brother’s head over the crowd, but Sam doesn’t turn around. When Dean looks closer, he can see that it’s because you’re sitting on the corner of the bar and Sam’s standing between your legs, kissing you like there’s no tomorrow.

“Ew,” Dean mutters to himself and turns around to the group of college kids that had challenged him. “All right, one on one, then?”

Despite the noise and people around you, you only have eyes for Sam and vice versa. You haven’t had time for this recently, what with the rapid pace the brothers look for cases at, so you’ll savor every second you can sit here, almost at eye level with your boyfriend.

You can feel every twitch of his fingers as he rests his hands on your hips, rubbing up and down slightly, and you unlock your arms from around Sam’s neck to brush back a lock of his hair. His lips gently pull away from yours and you sigh. “It’s been too long since we could relax. You and Dean look for hunts obsessively.”

“This is the daughter of Bobby Singer telling me that,” Sam replies.

“Dad is a bit of a workaholic, but you and Dean are on another level,” you reply. “We haven’t even had time to talk to Dad about anything not work-related.  _ We _ haven’t had time to talk about anything work-related.”

Sam smiles, rubbing his nose against yours, his eyes gleaming in the low light. They’re a different color again, like they are every day. “Hmm. What could we possibly talk about that’s not work related?”

“I don’t know,” you tease. You gasp when he leans forward and bites your lower lip gently.

“How about I love you,” Sam whispers, too quiet for anyone to hear, even if the music wasn’t pounding and people weren’t talking.

“I love you, too.”

Sam looks around at your surroundings and back to you. “Wanna get out of here?”

* * *

 

When the bar closes, Dean stumbles out of the building with a redhead hanging off his arms, but he hadn’t seen you and Sam in a while and when he checks, you’re not in the back of the Impala, so he calls Sam while driving back to the motel room. He hopes the two of you aren’t already occupying the room.

“Hey, Dean,” Sam answers on the third ring. “What’s up?”

“Where are you and Y/N?”

“We’re at Barnes and Noble,” he replies. “Why?”

Dean makes a face. “What’s Barnes and Noble?”

Sam sighs deeply, and Dean just  _ knows _ that he’s pinching the bridge of his nose as he replies with a pained voice, “It’s a bookstore, Dean. Y/N wanted to make fun of the Supernatural books again.”

Dean makes a disgusted face. “You guys are such nerds. Also, those books sucked ass.”

The girl in the passenger seat lets out a loud giggle at that, and Dean isn’t sure if she’s just drunk or hoping that she’ll get some of that sort of action when they get back.

“Hey, you guys are good in the Impala, right?” Dean smiles at the redhead and she smiles back. “I’m grabbing the room.”

Sam grunts with annoyance. “Yes, we’re fine with the Impala. I told you that we should have just gotten two rooms but you insisted on saving money—it’s not even our money—”

“You’re just mad your gigantic Sasquatch form will have to squish into the backseat,” Dean interrupts.

“A bit, yeah. It’s uncomfortable.”

“I bet Y/N can take your mind off the uncomfortableness.”

“Shut up.”

“Bye.”

Sam hangs up. “He’s taking the motel room. Again.”

“You should have just gotten a second room,” you chide. “We both know how Dean is.”

“At least the walk back isn’t too cold.”

“And if it is, I’ll have you to warm me up,” you tease. “Okay, here’s one about Azazel, this should be interesting.”

And though Sam wants to cringe at the way Chuck portrays their lives, the way you can’t stop laughing, and how dumb everything seems from an outside point of view, he just rests his elbow on the top of the bookshelf and smiles at your smile. His dignity is a small price to pay for your happiness.

Later, Sam will lay down in the backseat of the Impala and you’ll lay in the front. He’ll stay up until you’ve fallen asleep just to watch, a small smile on his face as your hand grips his even in sleep, but eventually sleep will claim him and he’ll fall into a dream.

It’s a recurring dream Sam’s been having lately. It’s you, walking next to him in a park. That’s all it is. Your hand is in his and for some reason you’re barefoot even though you’re wearing the rest of your typical outfit: hair in a ponytail or sometimes a braid, a flannel, and a pair of soft jeans. It’s probably the simplest outfit ever, but you’re practically glowing in the soft light.

You turn and smile at Sam and he smiles back.

* * *

 

Sam wakes up to the sound of an alarm blaring. Sam isn’t holding your hand anymore. He’s not even in the backseat of the Impala anymore.

Sam sits up and opens his eyes to a spartan room with a dark color scheme. An alarm clock with the red block numbers 6:00 is beeping loudly.

It’s definitely not the motel room he checked into with Dean and you yesterday, and it’s definitely not the Impala where he’d gone to sleep.

“What the hell?”


	2. Chapter 2

The clock continues to blare, much to Sam’s intense annoyance, so eventually he just yanks the cord out of the wall when he discovers he can’t make sense of the many buttons on its surface.

His surroundings are both too simple and too complicated for Sam to make much sense of. The only decoration on the grey-colored walls is a canvas with the words ‘God bless kale— Samuel Winchester’ written in fancy cursive.

Sam frowns. “What?” That’s not something he would ever say, both because you and Dean would ridicule him for it endlessly, and also because he likes eating healthy, but it’s not  _ that _ important to him. Also, who would ever have that quote on their wall? That’s ridiculous.

There’s nothing unusual about the room, save for the fact that Sam didn’t go to sleep here and he’s never seen it before in his life. You would absolutely hate the black bedsheets and pillowcases, insisting on at least a navy blue. There always had to be a little bit of color and music around you or you go crazy. It’s one of the things Sam loved about you.

Sam frowns. Why’s the thinking in the past tense? Just because he doesn’t know where you are doesn’t mean you’ve, like,  _ died _ or anything. That would be ridiculous. Everyone knows you can’t die. You’re one of the best hunters ever, plus even imagining you dead is laughable. Nothing could keep you from standing back up, not even Death himself.

The bathroom is the same: only the essentials in the cabinets, the place as spotless as if nobody even lives in the place. The entire house, way too large for just Sam, is the same way. It may just be a regular house, but one person doesn’t need this whole space.

Sam laughs. “This is ridiculous,” he mutters. “I don’t live here. I don’t know what this is. I don’t know how I got here.” But still, he can’t help but feel that this is the place he lives now, and it’s much too large and quiet: the opposite of the Impala, which is always blaring rock and alive with your laughter, cramming the two large Winchesters and slighter Singer into their seats and with beer coolers on the floor.

The only possible explanation Sam has for waking up here is somehow getting super drunk and wandering into someone’s house, but they probably would have noticed and Sam didn’t even drink more than a beer last night before heading to Barnes and Noble with you. So that’s pretty much out of the question.

The fridge is what Sam wishes you and Dean would eat more: all healthy foods; stuff like kale (Sam thinks about the quote upstairs) and lettuce.

It’s when Sam opens his cupboard that stuff gets interesting.

There’s an entire shelf of salt. On each lid someone had drawn a devil’s trap.

On the shelf below the salt is another shelf stocked with only one product: spray paint.

“Definitely a hunter’s house,” Sam mutters. On a hunch, he lifts up the corner of a rug. In this cold, dark house, a rug seems out of place; a cold stone floor would be more fitting. Sam’s beginning to think this place is just an elaborate dungeon. It certainly feels as oppressive as one.

Just as he’d suspected, there’s a Devil’s trap painted onto the floor underneath it. Sam bets there’s one under every rug and bed in the house. It’s what he would do if he had a house.

Sam climbs the stairs back up to the bedroom. His phone is lying on the bedside stand, but it doesn’t have the occasional crack on its screen from getting thrown around by monsters and it’s not slightly bent at the bottom right corner. It’s pristine, just like the house.

He pulls open the one drawer, hoping for a clue as to who the house belongs to, but the contents inside only confuse him more: a CD and a single glossy photo Sam’s almost sure he doesn’t remember taking: you and him, so young it was obviously taken before he went to college, talking, sitting cross-legged and face to face in front of the Impala.

Sam and you talking isn’t exactly a monumental occurrence, so that scene could very well have happened, but Sam knows for a fact that no one in his family is particularly fond of taking photos. So who took this photo of you and Sam together?

_ Dean. _

The thought comes to him completely unprompted. It definitely wasn’t Dean; that wasn’t something Dean would ever take a picture of. Dean prefers to take embarrassing photos of you and Sam for blackmail, not something that could even be considered sweet. It goes against his ‘tough guy’ persona.

Now that he’s thinking of his brother, Sam has a thought that he should’ve had the second he woke up but for some reason didn’t. He dials his brother’s number. Dean picks up on the second ring.

“Hello?”

Sam sags with relief at his brother’s voice. “Dean! Hey, Dean, where are you? Are you at the motel room?”

“Who is this?” his brother asks instead of answering.

Sam frowns. His brother has his number saved in his phone, all of them. “Dean, it’s me. Sam.”

Dean hangs up.

“What the hell?” Sam mutters, running a hand through his hair, and calls his brother again. Dean picks up on the first ring this time.

“I don’t know if you’re actually Sam or just a monster, but don’t call me. Call again and I’ll kill you.”

“Wait! Dean—”

He hangs up again.

“What the hell is going on?” Sam asks himself. Why would Dean be angry with him? He hadn’t done anything last night, had he?

Maybe he’d accidentally hurt Baby. That would definitely be something that Dean would try to kill him for.

Sam dials again.

Dean picks up with an exaggerated sigh and immediately starts talking. “Look, man, I don’t know if you can’t hear suddenly, but I don’t want to hear from you. Like, at all. So leave me the fuck alone.”

“Wait! Please don’t hang up,” Sam pleads, sensing that his brother’s thumb is hovering over the ‘End Call’ button. He knows Dean. “Dean, something happened and I woke up in this strange house and there’s a quote on the wall that says it’s by me, but I’ve never said ‘God bless kale’ in my life, so—”

“Sam, you say ‘God bless kale’ every day,” Dean interrupts. “I’m pretty sure the words are what you cry out during sex.”

That definitely sounds like Dean.

“Look, where are you?” Sam asks desperately. “I’m seriously freaking out, man. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Dean’s voice is hard when he speaks. “Are you with the FBI? You’re not tracking this call, are you? God  _ damn _ it, Sam.”

“No!” Sam almost pulls his hair out. “I’m not with the FBI, I swear. Dean, we’re both on their Most Wanted lists.”

“ _ I _ am,” Dean corrects. “What is your deal?”

Sam frowns. “I don’t know.” His brother doesn’t sound like Dean; his voice is too unconcerned, too cool. Sam’s only ever heard him use that tone of voice with monsters that try pleading for their lives. He checks the date on his phone. It’s the correct day and year. “Yesterday I was hunting with you and Y/N and then I woke up here—”

“Shut up!” Dean barks. Sam flinches. “What, so this is just all coming from a dream? You’re such an ass, Sam. You made your choice and I made mine. I still can’t believe you sometimes.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Sam roars. “Something’s going on, Dean!”

Dean doesn’t say anything for a while, so long that Sam has to check that he hasn’t hung up again. Finally, he says, “Okay, then what’s your problem?” Even after all this time, Dean’s a sucker for his younger brother. Other hunters say he’s too nostalgic.

“Dean, yesterday we were in Long Pine, Nebraska, staying in the Long Pine Bunkhouse, hunting a rugaru, and I woke up today in this strange place.”

“How’d you know where I am and what monster it is?” Dean snaps.

“Because we were hunting it together yesterday!” Sam replies exasperatedly. Why is it taking his brother so long to understand this?

“Sam, you haven’t hunted with me since you went to college,” Dean replies.

“What?” Sam screws up his face with confusion. “Oh, come on, Dean, this isn’t some prank you and Y/N are pulling on me, is it?”

Dean laughs, but it’s a sound that isn’t happy. “Sam, trust me, Y/N doesn’t have anything to do with this. Whatever ‘this’ is.”

“Why not?”

“You killed her.”

* * *

 

Sam shows up at the Long Pine later that day, ignoring nonstop calls from someone named Nancy. Dean opens the door when he knocks, and Sam’s greeted by three things: holy water to the face, a silver knife, and his brother’s face.

Sam doesn’t remember him having so many scars or hair that short, but he takes the knife and draws a thin cut on his upper arm. Dean nods, finally satisfied, and lets him into the room.

“You do know that if you brought FBI and you’re faking this whole freakout, I’m going to kill you, right?”

Sam looks into his brother’s eyes and finally finds out what it feels like to be a monster the Winchesters are hunting. There’s no teasing in his brother’s eyes, no warmth, nothing. He really would kill Sam and the FBI squad that would show up if he was lying. “I’m not faking it.”

Dean nods and picks up a beer from the bedside stand. As Sam looks around more, he realizes his brother’s room looks like a trash pit. Surely his brother’s liver can’t be well off, considering how much beer he appears to drink. And that’s saying something, considering how much beer Sam is used to his brother drinking. “All right, spill.” Dean pulls out his trusty handgun and rests it on his knee, pointed at Sam.

“I honestly have no idea what happened,” Sam says honestly. “Yesterday we finished up that rugaru hunt and then we went to a bar. Y/N and I left early to go to Barnes and Noble and then we slept in the Impala because you were taking a girl to the motel room. Then I wake up in a pretentious home with the quote ‘God bless kale’ on the wall—I mean, what the hell?”

Dean pulls his phone out of his pocket and taps the screen a few times before handing it to Sam. It’s a YouTube video of Sam, but it doesn’t quite look like him. He’s wearing glasses  and his hair is slicked back and slightly shorter than it should be.

“Ew,” Sam mutters and Dean huffs out a laugh.

“That’s exactly what I thought.”

The Sam in the video paces around a stage, spewing all sorts of pretentious health tricks and stuff about not letting anything hold you back, not even family. He ends the speech with “I mean, God bless kale, am I right?”

Sam makes a face. “I—that’s—I’ve never—”

Dean just sits and watches him.

Sam quickly searches both his and his brother’s names. Dean’s been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list since ‘09 and Sam has his own law firm.

Finally, Sam searches for you.

“Y/N Singer was convicted for multiple counts of murder, arson, grave desecration, and sentenced to the death penalty. Her sentence was carried out on February 23, 2009,” Sam reads out loud and puts a hand to his mouth. Dean watches him, eyes calculating.

Sam sprints to the bathroom and empties the contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl.

“I hope you had that same reaction the day it happened,” Dean says coldly, leaning one shoulder on the doorframe and watching as his little brother retches.

“You said I killed her,” Sam says weakly once he’s finished, slumping against the side of the bathtub.

“You went into law, missing Dad be damned, and rose through the ranks of your pretentious law firm,” Dean says, crouching down so he can look his brother in the eyes as he reminds him of his sins, because it would appear he’s forgotten.

Dean’s so livid Sam can’t even see it. How Sam could forget what he had done, how he could dare to speak your name out loud, it baffles him. There’s no excuse. “You were assigned to prosecute Y/N when she was caught, I guess. And your reputation was too important, so you made sure she was sentenced. You know what you told me?”

Sam hugs his knees to his chest. “What?”

“You said you’d help her get out. And then you didn’t, because they could have caught you. And she died.” Dean turns away so Sam can’t see the struggle on his face. Sam can’t be faking this memory thing, because he knows that what he did was unforgivable and that Dean had sworn to kill him if he ever saw him again. So for Sam to show up on his doorstep, acting like the brother he remembers from their shared childhood… the only explanation is that he really is having an episode or whatever.

“Y/N never hurt a person,” he says softly, starting to vibrate with anger. “She was the sweetest hunter I ever knew. You  _ loved _ her, Sam.”

Sam shuts his eyes and shakes his head.

“You  _ loved _ her! And you killed her!” Dean bellows. “Because you couldn’t handle losing a case!”

“That wasn’t me!” Sam yells. “I would never, Dean!”

“That’s what I thought, too!” Dean shouts, his face turning red, fists clenching so he doesn’t reach for his gun. “You forget I raised you, Sam! I taught you every trick, every move, every game I know! I sacrificed everything for you! You ate first, you got the bed and I got the floor, and I never complained, because I  _ loved _ you, and I was happy that you were happy! I was happy that you were turning out good because I had turned into a fucking  _ mother _ to take care of you, and then you know what you do? You  _ kill _ my sister. You  _ killed _ Y/N and then you have the audacity to keep that picture in your bedside stand and say you regret it and say you still love her. You didn’t love her. You didn’t love me. And I shouldn’t have loved you.”

While he had been yelling, Sam had put his head in his knees and started to sob, shoulders shaking, because he knows that this isn’t real but right now he doesn’t have you, and for some reason, for some godawful reason, he’s starting to remember talking with you after your trial and promising to get you out but then his boss had called for a dinner and he had gone to that dinner and you had died. “You don’t mean that, Dean. Y-you can’t.” There’s an awful, hollow feeling in his chest that he should be used to, after years of you being dead, but the thought of being used to it makes him terrified.

There’s memories coming back that Sam knows aren’t real, the memory of the night, that dinner with his boss, and when he got home he was told that there was a scheduling error by his secretary Nancy and that Y/N had been executed already.

And even though it never happened to him, Sam can feel every excruciating detail of that memory, burnt into his memory, and the waves of grief that only Dean could have soothed, and then his brother had called and threatened to kill him.

And now Dean hates him and he loves kale and the only decorations in his room are a picture of you, a CD, and a pretentious quote on his wall.

Dean’s fit of anger fades when he sees his brother’s shuddering shoulders. Goddamnit, but he still does have a soft spot for his brother, no matter what he did, because he is Sam’s mother, after all. Sam’s practically a part of him.

“Dean, I swear to God, I would never do that,” Sam vows, wiping his eyes but keeping his eyes on the floor. His eyes go wide when he realizes what must be going on. “You didn’t happen to piss off an angel recently, did you?”

“What?”

Sam scrambles to his feet. “This has happened before—our memories have been messed with before, remember when I was working IT and you were a health nut? Maybe we pissed off an angel and they decided to pull this trick—”

“Wow, you really are out of it,” Dean says, his eyes half-lidded as he watches Sam. That’s how he is nowadays; wild and extreme mood swings because he’d lost every single person he’d ever loved. “Angels, Sam? Is this some sort of midlife crisis? Has the stress made you lose your mind?”

“Cas,” Sam mutters. “Dean, where’s Cas?”

“Who?”

“Wait, if I didn’t die, then the angels wouldn’t have pulled you from hell, so of course you don’t know Cas,” he continues feverishly. “So no apocalypse because you didn’t go to hell. So you’ve just been a regular hunter all these years?”

“What are you talking about?” Dean frowns. “What else would I have been?”

“Dean, if you ever loved me, just trust me,” Sam says, standing up and brushing by his brother. “I have a story to tell.”

* * *

 

Dean’s face is blank when Sam finishes the story. Finally, he asks, “How many drugs are you on?”

“I’m not out of it,” Sam insists. “Dude, trust me. What we would do would make people think we’re crazy, but we know monsters are real. And if demons are real, why’s it so unbelievable that angels might be too?”

“Fine, angels, maybe,” Dean relents. “But everyone knows you can’t come back from the dead!”

“What about zombies and ghosts?” Sam reminds him.

“But that’s not  _ really _ coming back.”

“Look, dude, just trust me. I—”

“Y/N trusted you,” Dean mutters.

Sam winces. “You’ve got to believe me, man. That wasn’t me—that must have been, like, a different version of me. Not this version, trust me. I… I haven’t wanted to be a lawyer in a long time. I’ve loved hunting with you and Y/N for years.”

“Y/N never wanted kids and a normal life like you did,” Dean reminisces. “That’s why she was so nervous around you, because she didn’t think you would still like her if she didn’t want what you did.”

“Dean, if you help me, I promise we’ll get Y/N back. Not just back, but this entire existence—me leaving, Y/N dying, all of it—that will get erased and it will never have happened. I promise.”

Dean eyes Sam warily. “Maybe you’re just freaking out, but sure. Worst comes to worst, you wake up and go back to your lawyering and I go back to hunting and we pretend this never happened.”

“Now we just need to figure out what happened,” Sam sighs. “Cas will know.”

“Cas, who saved me from hell?” Dean asks and Sam nods. “Well, how do we get him down here?”

“I know a ritual.”

“This isn’t gonna work,” Dean mutters. “Angels don’t exist, otherwise hunters would have encountered them a while ago—”

“Dude, most of them are dicks,” Sam interrupts. “I’m sure some hunters have encountered them and the angels smited them.”

“Then why are we summoning a dick down here?”

Sam frowns. “Cas was a dick at first, but he got better. Hopefully he won’t kill us immediately. Maybe he even remembers the timeline I came from. Angels are weird,” Sam adds as an afterthought. “I know something that will banish him, anyway.”

Once they’re set up, Dean hovering by the symbol on the wall, ready to press it to banish Cas at a moment’s notice, and Sam ready to talk to the angel, they share a look. It’s a normal look for Sam, the way they both check with each other to make sure they’re ready before hunting, but it hurts Dean’s heart. He’s missed his brother.

“All right, Cas,” Sam says, finishing the ritual. “Get on down here.”

A white light blinds them. Once it fades, Cas wearing Jimmy Novak is squinting at the two hunters. “Who are you and how did you know how to summon me?”

“Cas, it’s me,” Sam pleads. “Don’t you remember?”

“I’ve never seen you before,” the angel replies. His angel blade falls into his hands. “Are you the one that’s been interfering with time?”

“Sort of, I guess?” Sam winces. “I want to set it back, though. I don’t like this timeline very much.”

“The Winchesters,” the angel realizes. “You were special, the both of you.” His eyes linger on Dean’s. Dean gulps. “You wish to fix this mistake?”

“Can’t you?” Sam asks. “I know Gabe and Zachariah have done things like this before.”

Cas frowns and shakes his head. “The fountain’s magic is one I am not allowed to break.”

“The fountain?” Sam frowns. “The fountain? Oh!”

_ “Sure, I wish to have never gotten back in the life even when you came to pick me up from college.” _

“Set things right,” Cas says gravely. “My superiors aren’t very happy with you.”

He disappears.

“That was an angel?” Dean asks. “Wow. He sort of sucked.”

“He’s better in my timeline,” Sam mutters. “All right, we have to find the fountain that granted me this wish.”

Dean barks out a harsh laugh. “What, you wished for Y/N to be dead and to be a lawyer?”

“I was joking around with you,” Sam murmurs. “I said something like ‘I wish I’d never gone with you when you came to pick me up from college’.”

Dean looks at him incredulously. “That’s something you joke about?”

“The you I know is a lot more easygoing,” Sam says under his breath. “So, what? Did I refuse to come with you or what?”

Even as he asks that, he remembers it: Sam telling Dean that he would be able to handle it, Jess dying only a little later, and Sam throwing himself into his work to distract himself. You visited sometimes, which reminded him of his old childhood crush on you, and eventually you two got together.

Then you’d made the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

“Don’t answer that,” Sam says hastily when Dean opens his mouth. “All right, well, that should be pretty easy. Destroying the fountain should work, right?”

“I assume so,” Dean shrugs. “I’m still not convinced you’re not bonkers, but let’s go.”

* * *

 

“Fuck!”

Dean crosses his arms as he watches his little brother pace around, spewing expletives, in front of the ‘Closed’ sign of the little Chinese restaurant. The insides are completely barren; whatever fountain Sam’s looking for is long gone.

Sam’s looking a little spare at the moment, his hair ruffled from running his hands through it so much, eyes twitching from tiredness, cursing like a sailor. Passerby give him a wide berth.

“God  _ damn _ it,” the younger Winchester mutters, fishing his phone out of his pocket and answers this Nancy that’s been calling him nonstop. “What the hell could be so important?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Winchester, but you didn’t show up at work today so I thought you might be sick and your house was empty and ransacked when I got to it—” the secretary on the other end babbles.

Sam holds the phone away from his ear and looks to Dean for help, but Dean’s stopped helping him long ago. Eventually he interrupts Nancy by saying, “I’m fine. I’m taking a vacation right now. Don’t call me again.”

“A vacation?” the girl repeats. “Mr. Winchester, are you all right?”

Sam hangs up and rolls his eyes at Dean, who should smirk and make a sexual comment about his secretary going to his house, but this Dean just raises one eyebrow and turns away. Sam blinks and shakes his head.

“So we gotta figure out where the fountain is, right?” Dean asks.

“If it isn’t demolished,” Sam mutters. “If it is, then I don’t know what we’ll do.” Surprising Dean, though he really shouldn’t be surprised at this point, considering the sort of madness his brother is spewing right now, he sits down on the sidewalk and puts his head on his knees.

Maybe when they were kids Dean would know what to do, but his brother’s been spewing anti-family content for years, making it very clear that he’s not welcome and no amends are going to be made anytime soon. Plus, at this point, the only thing Dean knows about Sam is his name. What he likes, if he’s seeing anyone (though that would be like betraying Y/N, Dean feels like), and all that other stuff is a mystery.

It’s the nostalgia that makes Dean sit down next to his brother, not quite able to bring himself to put a hand on his back. Even if his brother has mysteriously lost his memory and thinks they’ve been hunting together for the past few decades, that doesn’t mean he’s just forgotten seeing that face push for Y/N to be killed.

“Hey, you don’t happen to have a headache or anything, do you?” Dean asks. “You haven’t hit your head or anything?”

Sam gives him a scalding look. “I’m not crazy, Dean. Not yet, anyway.”

Dean frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m starting to remember things that I haven’t done,” Sam whispers. “I remember the trial. I remember pushing to kill Y/N. And I can’t remember some things about my timeline, like where I took Y/N out on our first date.”

“You’re starting to turn into the Sam I know,” Dean realizes.

“I don’t want to be him,” Sam whispers, looking at his brother with teary eyes. “Please, Dee. I don’t want to be him.”

“That’s all right,” Dean says, suddenly reminded of how Sam would cry sometimes when he wanted something from Dean when they were kids. He slings his arm around Sam’s shoulders. “You’re not gonna. I won’t let you.”

Sam sniffs. Despite being over six feet tall, his hunched shoulders and inturned feet make him look small.

“Let’s call it a night and get back to it in the morning,” Dean suggests, standing up and taking Sam with him. “I doubt you’ll forget your entire life in one night.”

* * *

 

The brothers track the fountain to one place, but it turns out they sold it to another place, and then that place had it transferred to another facility, but then the truck that had been carrying it had crashed, and somehow the brothers find themselves picking through a dump. Dean looks up to see his brother’s disgusted face as he wades through the leaking garbage bags, but it’s not a regular disgusted face, it’s a ‘this is all beneath me’ face. For a moment Dean forgets about everything that’s happened, seeing that expression on his brother’s face, and wonders why he’s bothering to help his brother.

Then Sam blinks and shakes his head. He smiles at his brother, a tense one but a real smile nonetheless, and Dean remembers. Sam’s starting to squint a bit now, his eyes going as he turns more into the Sam Dean knows. The physical sign of his change is scaring both of them.

If Dean can have his brother and his sister back, he’d do anything, but watching this new Sam turn into the Sam he’s used to is killing him.

Sam almost starts to cry when he finally sees the fountain. It’s sitting in the middle of a pile of black garbage bags. “Dean! Dean, come look!”

Dean scrambles over and looks to where his brother’s pointing. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Sam nods. “I’m sure of it.”

“Then we’ll need to get it to a construction site,” Dean says decisively. “Run it over with a truck, you think?”

“Maybe taking the coin will reverse it,” Sam says. He starts to make his way to the fountain when a shout stops Dean from following him.

Dean turns around with a fake smile. “Yes?”

“This is private property,” an old man with a missing tooth bellows from a few yards away. He must be slightly deaf. “You boys better get off right now!”

“All right!” Dean yells, beckoning Sam over. Sam holds up the penny, glinting in the fading light, and pockets it. “Sorry, sir! We’re leaving now! You think that’ll do the trick?” he adds in an undertone to Sam.

Sam shrugs. “If we wake up and things aren’t changed, we can just destroy it tomorrow.”

“Man, I can’t wait to see Y/N,” Dean says, smiling wistfully.

“Me too,” Sam agrees fervently. “You have no idea.”

Dean thinks he does, but he keeps his mouth shut. One thing about this new Sam becoming more like the old Sam is him thinking less and less about other people. He really hopes this works.

* * *

 

Dean wakes up to a familiar click. When he opens his eyes, his pistol is staring him down. Sam is holding it up, jaw clenched. “Sammy?”

“It’s Sam,” he corrects unconsciously. “What the hell am I doing with  _ you _ ? Did you kidnap me?”

“Hey, you tracked me down,” Dean says, sitting up fully. His brother won’t kill him, he doesn’t think. “You were having a meltdown. You completely lost it.”

“I’m surprised I’m not dead, then,” Sam sneers. “Considering you’re a professional killer. Maybe I should call the FBI, see what they think about Dean Winchester being here.”

“Well, out of the two of us, I’m not the one that’s killing innocents,” Dean shrugs, his voice light so it doesn’t betray his emotions. That would be embarrassing.

Sam’s hands tremble.

“We both know you aren’t gonna shoot me, Sam,” Dean says, eyeing his brother’s posture. His legs are spread too wide, both hands on the gun. He’s lost his edge, and for the first time Dean’s completely sure that he was telling the truth earlier. No one is good enough of an actor to completely change their posture for a character. This Sam moves and acts, hell, even  _ breathes _ different from how he’d done it just yesterday. “Put down the gun.”

Dean needs to smash that fountain. This is hell; the way Sam’s looking at him now compared to the way he looked at him yesterday. He wants to cry. He’s lost his brother again, and he might not even get him back. Or you. Somehow knowing that he could have gotten them both back makes it so much worse.

“Don’t fucking contact me again,” his brother spits. He sets the gun down and hightails it out of the room.

“Wouldn’t want to!” Dean yells after him.

When the maid comes in to clean later, she finds the entire room has been wrecked.

* * *

 

Dean runs the bulldozer over that stupid fountain once, then twice, then three times, until the stone is just dust under its wheels, and then he hits the wheel once when nothing happens. Maybe Sam had been faking it after all, a cruel trick he’d devised, or he really was helping the FBI find Dean. At this point, he wouldn’t even care if he was arrested. Knowing his luck, Sam would be the one to prosecute him, too.

Dean revs the engine of the bulldozer and starts to pull it forward, but it jerks to the side so violently he’s thrown out of the car, falling, falling, falling…

Falling right into a bed.

* * *

 

Dean and Sam wake up with identical gasps of air, Dean in the motel room and Sam in the car.

Sam throws himself over the seat, waking you up as he hugs you to his body tight enough to strangle you.

“Uncle!” you joke-wheeze and tap his arm. “Sam, what gives?”

Sam pulls away just enough to let you breathe and buries his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling your scent deeply. He doesn’t think he’ll ever let you go now that you’re in his arms for fear of you disappearing or worse. Being able to smell you and run his hands up and down your arms reassures him that you’re really here and not dead anymore, thank God.

“I just had a really bad dream,” he finally mutters.

You smooth down his bedhead absently. “Clowns or midgets? Did I save you from them?”

Before Sam can answer, the Impala’s door opens and Dean catapults himself into the hugfest wearing only his boxers. The girl he’d brought home stands in the doorway of the room, watching with confusion.

“Let me guess,” you laugh, gladly accepting Dean’s hug as well, “you had a bad dream too?”

“You have no idea,” Dean replies, his eyes meeting Sam’s over your head.


End file.
